Hi, I'm a humpback whale!

Yes, it's your good friend megaptera novaeangliae. You may have seen me on your TV sets on such channels as Discovery, National Geographic Explorer, and public television -- or if you're really lucky, you may have even seen me up close from the deck of a boat. (And for the record, I know that public TV isn't so much a single channel entity as it is a free-airwaves concept that varies from market to market. Don't condescend to me.)

I have to make this short, because the owner of this computer doesn't know there's a large, sea-borne mammal in his office... and besides, it's quite hard to type on this PowerBook with these massive fins.

I've found that there's a certain mystery in that little pink biped "magician" (I'm employing air-fin quotes as I type for added emphasis) who likes to live in saltwater tanks for weeks on end. What is your species's damage? I have to be in the brine. My food is there -- thousands of tons of plankton a month, all strained through the numerous baleen strands that fill my mouth. Besides, if I were out of the soup, my innards would surely collapse in upon themselves.

But this idiot -- this foolish member of your dry little species, with that please-smack-me-with-your-fluke look on his face, the heavy-lidded eyes, and the I'm-a-daredevil-and-I-can't-help-but-be-smacked-with-your-massive-fluke demeanor. This douschewhistle is a tremendous fraud -- even more tremendous than my ability to dive and stay below icy, arctic waters for nearly an hour at a clip.

Before I slide through this nice (albeit unwittingly so) person's home on my moist fins and make my way back to the chilling blue depths I call home, I implore you to pay greater heed to whom you offer your valuable media exposure to -- certainly, you have more deserving heroes than this mountebank. I understand that your once-voluptuous teen sex-object Lindsay Lohan is reclaiming her image as a serious artist via a project with famous pink biped director Robert Altman. Why don't you talk about that for a while?

But, what do I know? My brain is only the size of a watermelon.